The human princess...

[Elvish_Pillager]

First of all, I wasn't sure whether this should go in the sticky thread, because I've also altered the base image.

I've 'fixed' the head of the Princess, and sketched out a four frame animation (no swishes or shadows yet.)

Behold:

[Boucman]

looks nice...

you can probably use the same frames to make her walk back after the strike...

[Eleazar]

First of all, I wasn't sure whether this should go in the sticky thread, because I've also altered the base image.

I've 'fixed' the head of the Princess, and sketched out a four frame animation (no swishes or shadows yet.)

IMO your "fixed" head looks worse than the old one. (i liked her improbably fluffy hair.)
The old animation seems move vibrant with her hair flying back. With yours it seems plastered to her head, but is otherwise good.

However i think the L3 Li'Sar is much worse. Edits to that would almost automaticly be improvements.

[Elvish_Pillager]

IMO your "fixed" head looks worse than the old one. (i liked her improbably fluffy hair.)

Improbably fluffy is no problem, but the old hair was sticking straight to the left, leaving the head unnaturally twisted from the body.

[Ankka]

IMO your "fixed" head looks worse than the old one. (i liked her improbably fluffy hair.)

Improbably fluffy is no problem, but the old hair was sticking straight to the left, leaving the head unnaturally twisted from the body.

I would disagree.

The new face is just weird, and the haircut isn't very cool.

And it's the new version that looks like she's all the time watching to the left instead of where she's walking to.

[Darth Fool]

Hmmm...new hair looks like a hood. You need to remove the dark outline and increase the randomness of it.

[Elvish_Pillager]

Well, the old hair had a darker outline and was less random

I'll try to fix it...

[Elvish_Pillager]

How's this?

[Eleazar]

IMO your "fixed" head looks worse than the old one. (i liked her improbably fluffy hair.)

Improbably fluffy is no problem, but the old hair was sticking straight to the left, leaving the head unnaturally twisted from the body.

erm, i'd call it 'head turned slightly to one side'. It's OK. Lots of people's heads can do that.

Less outlining than the old one is probably good, but i believe you are trying to fix something that's not broken. (And distracts from the good attack animation you've done.)

[Jetrel]

i believe you are trying to fix something that's not broken. (And distracts from the good attack animation you've done.)

As do I - focus on making animations. I'll improve the base sprite, if it needs it. Amongst other things, keep in mind that our little sprite people have heads that are deliberately dilated in size. What you saw as hair hanging out in mid-air was actually hair hanging flat on the back of her head.

For someone of your drawing skills (the depth of which I'm well aware), the issue of facial feature placement is often counter-intuitive. Human beings naturally have a completely incorrect idea in their heads of the physical shape and dimensions of the natural world. To be a decent artist, everyone has to break this conception that they were born with and replace it with something that's actually correct. Everyone tends to have the wrong idea of how faces are shaped - especially from the side.

Natural ≠ correct. Ironically, drawing what seems natural to your memory can look completely unnatural.

DO NOT trust your visual memory. That is one of the worst mistakes a beginning artists (e.g. you) can make. Assume it is wrong. Study from life, and break it into being correct.

I've found out that Leonardo Da Vinci advised the exact same thing. Don't take my word for it - take his.

[Jetrel]

For the animation, you should probably make her do more of a lunge. What you have is fairly well-done, in terms of moving stuff around and keeping the frames clean.

Make her torso drop down slightly, though.

[Elvish_Pillager]

But I like fixing what isn't broken! Otherwise, how is it going to get fixed?

Anyway, now I have her lunge a couple more pixels...

[Jetrel]

Front leg needs to go far forward during the lunge, and he torso needs to dip down - a lot. Like, dip down 5 pixels.

[squasher]

her right shoulder makes a strange movement. if mines would do so, i would surely visit a docter.
You should (more or less) fix the shoulder to the body and move the (fore)arm instead. I guess that's the way the normal human (if such thing exists) moves.

[Jetrel]

I'm not opposed to changes and improvements, but they do need to be improvements.

Your current situation with "drawing hair" is making the exact same mistakes that I made when I did the first revision of the female mages. I just randomly spattered pixels of the hair color into the space where the hair was, thinking that if I did that, it would approximate the "randomness" of the hair. And yeah, it did, but two of the most important things about the hair, the flow direction, and the specular highlighting, were completely missed.

When you do hair, it's best to approxmate the flow of the hair by showing only a few strands - the hair on a sprite of this size will actually be more like a mop would be in the real world, with hair separated into large locks. Truly only a few, and I do mean something less than five, at our sprite size. This is in the same way that we cannot draw all the separate fingers on the hand, rather, we have to suggest the shape of the hand.

The second, and equally important thing to do, is to give appropriate specular highlights. Describing shading is really hard, although I'll try and get around to a decent tutorial on it sometime soon. Fortunately, that chitzy "anime ring" of light hair applied almost at the spots where a crown would touch the head usually works pretty darn well - it was, of course, based on something from the real world, although it's a really dangerous thing to use in large-scale drawings, because there it is generally an oversimplification to the point of inaccuracy - the danger is that your drawing will look like it came from some anime-obsessed moron who can't draw, and no one wants that . It usually works when the light is falling like it would from a noonday sun, which works for sprites.

With both of these things, especially the first, these are things that should be added in with utmost care - if you do them wrong, they will make your drawing worse that it would be if it just had a flat color for the hair.

That said, experimentation is good, and you need to do a whole lot more experimenting with drawing heads. It would actually be useful for you to make some more stock heads like Francisco made for his "Giving your hero a personality" tutorial. I will happily critique/edit them and show you how to do this to the best of your ability.